Land your hackathon pitch: a playbook for winning the room

The Xero App & Agent Hackathon lands in London on 4 and 5 July: two days, £9,000 in prizes, and one mission, to build AI-powered apps and agents that do not just look good in a demo but actually work in the real world. Once the building stops, the pitching starts. With that much on the line, you will have three minutes in front of the judges to turn everything you made into a story they believe in. That is not much time, so we asked Annie Terry, our Head of Platform Marketing at Xero, how to make every second count.

Across the hackathons she has organised over the years, Annie has watched a lot of pitches, including a memorable one from a passionate team that turned their idea into a fully functional app and business that is now used by thousands of small businesses. They remain a valued member of our ecosystem today. Her view is simple: the build gets you to the room, but the pitch is what wins it. Here are her top tips for making the pitch count.

1. Treat your three minutes like the scarce resource it is

“Every second is a premium asset,” Annie says. In 180 seconds you need to capture the judges’ imagination, explain how you built the thing, and prove there is a real market for it. That sounds like a lot, and it is, which is exactly why a rambling pitch loses.

The fix is to decide in advance what each chunk of time is for, and then protect it. If you try to say everything, the judges will remember nothing. Pick the few points that matter most and give them room to land.

2. Name a specific problem before you show your solution

The strongest pitches start with a person, not a product. Be precise about who your customer is and the friction they hit every single day while running their business. Deep understanding will help you get really specific on the problem and more importantly makes your solution feel inevitable.

“Fall in love with the problem and build deep customer empathy. You’ll then be able to showcase your app as the natural solution to the problem,” Annie says. Once the pain is clear, the question to answer is equally clear: how exactly does this person’s day get better after they use what you built? Spell out the value to the customer in plain terms, and point to the size of the opportunity while you are at it.

3. Let the demo do the talking

This is the part Annie is most insistent about. The demo is the moment your project stops looking like a weekend hack and starts looking like a real app, so it deserves the biggest share of your time.

Show, do not tell. Walk the judges through the main thing a customer would actually do with your app, and lead with your most impressive feature. Skip the sign-up screens and the settings pages, since nobody was ever won over by a registration form. And if doing it live feels risky, with dodgy wifi or a fragile build, record a clean walk-through in advance. A demo that works beats a live demo that might not, every time.

4. Show your technical chops without drowning the room in detail

Judges want to see that you know what you are doing under the hood, so give them a quick, confident tour of how you built it. Name the core technologies and the platform you developed on, and keep it brief.

Then get specific about Xero, because this is a Xero hackathon and the judges want to see how you built on the platform. Which Xero data did you connect to, and which parts of our API gave you an edge while you were building? This is where our webhooks are worth a look. Rather than your app constantly asking Xero “anything new yet?” over and over, webhooks let Xero tell your app the moment something changes. It means less repetitive checking, more responding to real events, and a better experience for everyone. One customer cut that repetitive checking by 40%. We shipped a new credit note webhook in March and we are now turning our attention to payments, so there is plenty to build with.

Finally, call out anything genuinely clever you did. If you found a neat optimisation or solved a hard problem in an unexpected way, the judges want to hear it.

Source: Unsplash

5. Follow a pitch flow that already works

You do not have to invent a pitch structure. Annie’s recommended flow maps neatly to your three minutes:

• 0 to 30 seconds, the hook. Define the customer problem and the opportunity.
• 30 to 100 seconds, the demo. Show your solution in action.
• 100 to 150 seconds, the tech. Share your stack and how you used the Xero API.
• 150 to 180 seconds, the future. Wrap up with the features you would add over time.

Practise it with a timer. The most common way to lose your ending is to run long and get cut off before you reach it.

6. Make your slides work on a projector, not just your laptop

Your slides are scenery, not the script. Keep them big, bold, and simple so they support you rather than compete with you.

Use massive fonts, think 30 point and up for body text and 60 point and up for headings. Go high contrast, with light text on a dark background or the reverse, so everything stays readable across the room. Stick to one major idea per slide, because the moment people start reading your slides, they have stopped listening to you. And lean on icons, screenshots, and simple charts instead of dense paragraphs.

7. Bring the energy, and own the room

“Energy is contagious,” Annie says, “and judges invest in people as much as ideas.” You built something real, so do not let nerves undersell it. Stand tall, speak with authority, and let your enthusiasm show.

A few traps to sidestep: do not bury the judges in jargon, because confusion is not the same as being impressed. Always have a working demo of what you built. And watch the clock so your closing line actually gets heard.

8. Win the questions after the buzzer

The pitch is not quite over when the timer stops. Think ahead about the gaps in your three minutes, the things you did not have time to cover, and be ready for the judges to probe them. Anticipating the obvious questions and having a calm answer ready is often what separates the top projects.

See you in London

The work happens at the desk, but the win happens at the microphone. Build something you are proud of, then give it a pitch that does it justice. We cannot wait to see what you make.

Got a question for the team before the hackathon? Come and ask us in the Xero Developer Day and Hackathon Discord server, your home for everything Dev Day and the hackathon.